Big storm lost its punch just as county braced for snow, rain

Forecasters said Mt. Laguna would get about a foot or more of snow on Tuesday. It never happened.

Forecasters said Mt. Laguna would get about a foot or more of snow on Tuesday. It never happened. (John Gibbins/Union-Tribune)

Gary Robbins

A Pacific storm that was expected to dump up to 18 inches of snow in San Diego’s mountains and heavy rains elsewhere suddenly weakened Tuesday, bringing a sputtering end to nearly a week of stormy weather.

The National Weather Service initially believed that a mass of cold, moist air would flow ashore, travel up the face of the mountains and condense, resulting in heavy precipitation.

The phenomenon is known as orographic lift, and it has produced some of the biggest storms in the region’s history.

The storm “just lost strength,” said Brandt Maxwell, a weather service forecaster.

“But we’ve had an especially wet period in which the rain has soaked in to the ground,” he said. “We still have a ways to go to get out of drought. But this really helped.”

Forecasters said the region could get some additional snow and rain before dawn on Wednesday. But the impressive rainfall came earlier.

Through 4 p.m. on Tuesday, a series of storms pushed the seasonal rainfall at San Diego International Airport to 9.11 inches, the weather service said. The average for this time of year is 5.44 inches.

The airport’s average annual rainfall is 10.33 inches.

“We may go beyond that level by the end of this month,” said Alex Tardy, a weather service forecaster. “There’s a good possibility that we’ll get more rain in mid-February.”